A Brief History On December 6, 1969, the motorcycle gang known as The Hell’s Angels were contracted to provide security at a Rolling Stones concert, a dumb decision that resulted in the Angels killing a concert goer, an incident we previously discussed in our article “December 6, 1969: 10 Dumb Decisions (Epic Blunders!).” Not content with pointing out blunders with a limit of only 10 massive mistakes, we expounded on the subject by listing “10 Business Blunders (Corporate Decisions Gone Bad!,” “April 15, 1861: 10 Times Military Needs Were Underestimated,” and “August 2, 1916: 10 Italian Military Catastrophes, Blunders, and…
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A Brief History On December 5, 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged to form the AFL-CIO, the largest confederation of trade and labor unions in the world. By 1979 the AFL-CIO claimed to represent 20 million union workers, but today has only 12 million members. Are union jobs going the way of the dinosaurs and Dodo birds? Today we take a brief look at the history of labor unions in the United States and the trends that have developed regarding working people. Workers represented by unions almost always have better pay and benefits…
A Brief History On December 2, 2015, an American married couple of Pakistani descent (one a citizen, the other a legal resident) named Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik ruined the Christmas party being held by employees of the Inland Regional Center (a not-for-profit organization that assists 33,000 people with developmental disabilities as well as the families of those persons) in San Bernardino, California by crashing the party with guns blazing, killing 14 people and wounding another 22 victims. The couple were killed later in a shootout with police, in which 2 officers were wounded. The couple were considered by…
A Brief History On December 1, 1958, a terrible fire roared through a Chicago parochial school called Our Lady of the Angels, ultimately resulting in the deaths of 92 children and three of the nuns on staff. Operated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, the school became instantly infamous as the leading headline in the United States and around the world. The sole bright side of the tragedy was that the shocking death toll and subsequent enormous publicity resulted in many safety reforms for American schools. On October 13, 2013, we ran an article titled “10 Religious Activity Disasters…
A Brief History On November 30, 1786, Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo I of The Grand Duchy of Tuscany initiated the first ban on capital punishment of any modern state. Contrary to other European leaders, and for that matter, virtually all World leaders, apparently Leopold (later Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire) must have thought the death penalty was not essential for those in power to remain in power. A proponent of “Enlightened Absolutism” (alternately called “Enlightened Despotism”), Leopold believed in the power of a monarchy to be used for the benefit of the people, but in a benevolent…